The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is as incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make an appearance among human beings.
They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images. Their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees "forms". Nowhere does their feeling lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, blindman's bluff on the backs of things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
(a fragment published posthumously) 1873
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Bonfire of the Evanescent
That arrogance which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses in a blinding fog, therefore deceives humanity about the value of existence by containing the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
(a fragment published postumously) 1873
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
(a fragment published postumously) 1873
A 1-Minute Intellectual History
How miserable, now shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it didn't exist. And when it's done for again, nothing will have happened.
Because this intellect has no further goal that would lead beyond human life.
It's human. And only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
(A fragment published posthumously)
1873
Because this intellect has no further goal that would lead beyond human life.
It's human. And only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
(A fragment published posthumously)
1873
Retroactive Indicative
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.
That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of world history.
Yet only a minute.
After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense", 1873, posthumously
That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of world history.
Yet only a minute.
After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense", 1873, posthumously
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The Few and the Many
The hope of society is that with the preservation of so many blanks one may also protect a few in whom humanity culminates. Otherwise it makes no sense at all to preserve so many wretched human beings.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Notes, 1873, VI, 336 f.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Notes, 1873, VI, 336 f.
Hoisted by a Petard
I did try to establish a heresy of my own. And when I had put the last touches on it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
G. K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy, 1959
G. K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy, 1959
Beautiful Loser
"This beautiful world history is a chaotic pile of garbage."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Notes, 1873
Friedrich Nietzsche
Notes, 1873